What do we do?

We combine skills drawn from top-tier design and innovation consultancies with the robust business analysis and strategic planning capabilities of Dalberg to support a unique set of integrated offerings for our clients. We work across a wide range of sectors, leveraging the rich content knowledge and expertise of Dalberg's specialized practice areas to ensure our creative approaches and collaborations are calibrated to the complexity of these challenges:

The value of Human-Centered Design

We believe the value of HCD lies in its ability to create solutions that can be successfully implemented because they are desirable, viable, feasible and sustainable.

Our design approach is iterative, measurable and results driven.

Our approach is focused on understanding dynamics between stakeholders across the ecosystem. We work with stakeholders—whether end users or service providers—to create solutions and strategies that overcome challenges and develop opportunities to create value and impact.

Our HCD practice is not static

We are actively evolving our approach towards community engagement and power sharing. As a group of designers dedicated to design for impact, we regularly discuss the ethical implications of our methods and are actively working on evolving our methodology to be more community-centered and and collectively owned.

How do we practice it?

We offer an integrated suite of tailored, evidence-based design services

There are many methods within our integrated design toolkit drawn from HCD and related disciplines. These methods are rigorous and multi-disciplinary, and help us understand needs, design for needs, and engage users and stakeholders. In practice, we routinely draw on related methodologies such as behavioral science, systems design, media production, data analytics, and lean / agile development. Our design methodology can be adapted to deliver a wide array of services while remaining grounded in our community-centered values:

We ground our work in deep, mixed-methods research to uncover insights that drive meaningful, contextually relevant solutions.

We design and lead dynamic, inclusive sessions that spark insight, alignment, and collaborative action.

We co-create with communities and stakeholders to ensure solutions are inclusive, equitable, and rooted in lived experience.

We prototype and test solutions in real-world settings to learn quickly, adapt, and build evidence for scale.

We make sense of complex data to reveal patterns, reframe challenges, and define clear opportunities for impact.

We use experiential, behaviorally informed approaches to build confidence, shift mindsets, and embed creative problem-solving skills.

We translate insights into tangible, testable solutions, refining concepts into practical, scalable designs.

We’ve developed toolkits for remote research and design, remote creative facilitation and integrating HCD with behavioral science. Download our primers here:

Screen Shot 2020-05-11 at 10.32.25 AM.png

Download our remote research and design primer.

Screen Shot 2020-05-11 at 10.32.06 AM.png

Download our remote creative facilitation primer.

Screen Shot 2020-05-11 at 10.31.39 AM.png

Download our HCD and behavioral science integration primer.

DESIGN LABS

Frequently, organizations go to considerable expense and effort to bring together diverse stakeholders, only to make poor use of their time, missing the opportunity to generate new perspectives and approaches in an active and collaborative manner. We are fully acclimated to working across disciplines to drive alignment toward shared visions and breakthrough thinking, whether for small convenings of 5-10 people or large sessions with more than 200 participants.

PRODUCT & BUSINESS PROTOTYPES

We have seen too many organizations get stuck in long program planning cycles and then invest valuable resources in expensive pilots without taking the simple step to rapidly prototype and test their assumptions early-on. We specialize in using agile techniques to rapidly and iteratively test and prototype a range of behavior change, incentive and service delivery models. Our approach leverages key techniques from social science and participatory design to ensure that the results are structured and rigorous.

SERVICE & PROGRAM DESIGN

Social impact generally requires influencing multiple dimensions of a fragmented ecosystem. Key elements of service delivery are often neglected or compromised because planners did not take a coordinated or holistic view. Our teams leverage user insights to create an integrated picture of needs and opportunities across the entire user journey. We then rapidly prototype and test programmatic solutions to validate their market fit, inform an MVP and roadmap, as well as generate impact data.

INNOVATION STRATEGY & CAPACITY BUILDING

Many of our clients have experimented with a range of different design and innovation methodologies, but encountered significant hurdles when they tried to integrate and sustain these approaches within their organizations. We see it as our responsibility to ensure that our clients get maximum value out of the resources they invest with us with a hands-on approach to drive learning through active engagement. We regularly develop toolkits and curricula to help our clients continuously learn and innovate.

THE DALBERG FAMILY

We are the only design group embedded in an advisory firm focused purely on social impact. We collaborate extensively with each part of the Dalberg Group. 80% of our work is integrated with other Dalberg capabilities, from strategy to market research to data analytics to measurement and evaluation.

This integrated approach helps ensure our ideas and solutions are truly viable, feasible, sustainable and actionable.